I’m not an old person, but I know I’m going to sound like a curmudgeon saying this.
I think it’s just moral decay. I can’t think of any other meaningful reason.
In Phoenix, which I consider the national capitol of bad drivers, in the span of less than 10 years, I’ve noticed a staggering number of people in the metro area who just blatantly run red lights now. Sometimes seconds after they’ve turned.
It’s straight up ridiculous, and now I spend time actually checking both sides of the road before driving away from stoplights in an active intersection.
I wouldn’t have thought to do that before. People just obeyed the law here. Not consistently mind you: no soul drives the 55 speed limit on I-17, but it’s getting measurably worse.
What else do you attribute to that? I guess you could say less traffic enforcement, but I don’t think anything’s changed here in this part of the country.
“Moral decay” doesn’t really offer much of an explanation though. That’s basically just saying “people are doing bad things more these days because people care less about doing good things these days.”
There’s absolutely a transition occurring from a country that is still mostly high trust to one that is low trust.
See: the sizable contingent in SF who believes that open air drug markets and rampant violent crime are simply the price one must pay to live in cities.
And allowing people to just steal whatever if it's below $1000.
Letting people into the country who come from third world countries where they are not use to laws being enforced and thus dont follow them once here.
Cities like San Francisco going down the tubes.
Not trying to be political just logical that being laisez faire on such things has negative consequences on a peaceful society ruled by laws and thus respect for your fellow citizen.
Im independent yet cant wait to vote out this type of laissez faire thinking.
SF has relatively low violent crime compared to other cities, while drug sales are to be expected where a significant amount of people think drugs should be decriminalized or legalized. I don’t think the city has much of anything to do with the point of vague “moral decay.”
Perhaps depends on your definition of “violent crime“ or what you are including. Armed robbery, for example, is a violent crime, and SF is in the top 20 cities in the US for that crime.
I was beaten to near death in the Tenderloin near the KFC/Taco Bell on Eddy.
To this day (despite this occurring in December 2021) there have been no arrests made. The police have names, video, witnesses and audio of one participant bragging about the assault.
The former DA had zero interest in prosecuting and the current one is suffocating under the backlog left to them.
This is not how a well functioning city - let alone a high trust one - operates. And it’s not just about statistics - an assault in SF, where it is likely the culprit won’t be arrested and certainly won’t be sent to prison, is significantly more damaging than a similar assault in a properly policed and actually adjudicating municipality.
It could be the "broken windows" theory. As more people do it, more people think it's acceptable or just how things are, and so do it themselves, further exacerbating the problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
Do you think there's a connection to this behaviour and the type of vehicle they drive?
With SUVs becoming super huge, maybe people feel that they don't have to stop because they won't be coming off worse in an accident?
It is “moral decay” almost by definition. But that’s pointless because it only shifts the question to what led to the “moral decay”.
Usually those crying out “moral decay” do so because they have certain pet theories, but there is no evidence for those pet theories, and more often than not there is enough evidence to disprove their pet theory.
I don't think that's a good explanation at all. People are murdering less than a few decades ago, beating their kids less, stealing fewer car stereos. There might indeed be moral decay, but that doesn't answer why fake license plates and not some other thing.
I suspect the reason for greater fake license plate use is the same reason for most products picking up: people are selling them, people are hearing about them, etc.
I suspect speeding has many causes, among them the fact that cars these days can accelerate easier and ride more gently at high speeds. People mostly drive however feels comfortable.
These are all acts of violence or crime directly against others, and not necessarily signs of moral decay.
I'm not sure moral decay is the term I'd use, perhaps?
I'd argue what's happening is that people seem to care less about other people, and more about themselves. It's more indifference, than outward anger or spite. "I'm not running the red light to hurt you, I just don't care that delays you, and I've got places to be" mindset.
At least, that's what I've concluded from my own observations.
I would say that violence against others is also important part of moral decay. As in, "I just do not care if it delayed you" is morally superior to "I best you to vent my own feelings or to control you".
You can use CDC WONDER[1] and the FBI's statistics[2] to check it. In terms of homicide, in raw numbers we are at 90s levels, but per-capita it's significantly down.
To be fair, the person you're replying to did specify "some parts" of the US. While you are correct the homicide is clearly down across the US, compared to the peaks in the 90s, there are also places where it is creeping back to 90s levels. Philadelphia and Chicago are two 'random' cities I just checked the statistics for and their murder rates are either at or close to the rates in 90s, and way up from the rates in the 2010s.
I'm guessing the rates are up in the cities, and down in the rural areas. And there's a good reason for this: there's fewer and fewer people in the rural areas and small towns, and the ones there are getting old. All the younger people are in the cities, and murders aren't normally committed by retired people.
the old truck i've got got broken into and the ignition got punched out and someone tried to steal it, but even though it is a 2000 it has an immobilizer so they weren't successful. i didn't bother reporting it. it was way under my insurance deductible and the cops aren't going to do anything due to a few hundred bucks of property damage. that incident won't appear in any statistics.
declining levels of relatively minor crime may reflect growing awareness that reporting it to the police is just a waste of everyone's time.
During the BLM protests, and then when COVID hit, police "quiet quit" on traffic enforcement, despite little to no danger to them (and high availability of the vaccine, which many did not avail themselves of.)
Unfortunately, the result has been skyrocketing injuries and deaths.
This sounds backwards to me- usually the argument I hear is people on the left arguing for banning traffic enforcement because it can be pretextual/is applied discriminatorily, and people on the right, pro police people, claiming it's necessary for policing to work.
Well, you are being Xenophobic but it's not thought provoking. Violent crime has been higher in the US than most third world countries my whole life, we are actually trending safer since the 80s. This is not an immigration/3rd world country thing, it's an American thing. 3rd world countries are just poorer but most of them are really safe.
The USA is the richest country in the world by a long way. How exactly is it suddenly becoming a 3rd world nation? I see this kind of hand wringing often from Americans, and I find it puzzling.
I was taught to always assure that the drivers on the cross street are stopping, and its saved me a couple times, particularly in the rain when people think their car will continue to brake in 10' despite the roads now being covered with a mixture of oil, tire sludge and water which is almost as slick as ice.
But, yes I find myself not having a lot of respect for much of traffic control these days, when the cities can't be bothered to even make the lights flash at 3 AM, and instead are stopping me at every single light down a road for exactly zero cross traffic. Or when there is a light out, and a cop sitting in their car waiting for someone to not treat it like a 4 way stop instead of getting out and directing traffic.
So, while I don't live in a place with automated ticketing, I can see the allure of fake license plates. My brother in law's house just had a light added on the cross street he uses to leave the neighborhood. Whats the first thing its doing? Long light cycles with short interruptions and ticketing everyone who runs it. Again because while that intersection hasn't needed a light for the past 40 years, and the town he is in hasn't grown much it got one after some drunk teenager caused a big accident. So, now it backs up, and instead of just turning left after a 10 seconds or so with a gap, one can sit there for multiple minutes because there are a dozen cars backed up trying to get out. And of course the ticket is like $150 or something, most of which goes to the private corp that put the camera in.
>when the cities can't be bothered to even make the lights flash at 3 AM, and instead are stopping me at every single light down a road for exactly zero cross traffic.
On the east and west coast, I feel like car sensing traffic lights are the norm.
They're pretty common elsewhere, but many intersections have fixed cycles before they actually pay attention to the sensors - they're only polled when another cross-traffic cycle is about to come up.
But this is about the situation in which the main road should be flashing yellow at low-traffic times, and the cross streets flashing red. Or, all flashing red if it's a limited-visibilty intersection. There's one of the latter near me, and it really only needs full cycles during morning and evening rush. The rest of the time, it would be faster for all involved as a four-way stop.
> when the cities can't be bothered to even make the lights flash at 3 AM
I live in a rural area where, as you can expect, traffic is very light. It was an absolute godsend when all the turn arrows changed from red/green to red/green/yield on flashing yellow. The frustration of sitting at a red turn signal when you could see that there was no oncoming traffic for a mile down the road was palpable, but cops are very good at hiding.
I feel the same way about not putting your shopping cart back in the proper place after loading your car. It's the one test of whether someone is willing to do the right thing absent any reward or punishment, and so many people completely fail the test. I generally lean libertarian, but it's a demonstration on people's inability to govern themselves.
Looking both ways even when the light is green has become a habit of mine.
Over forty years ago my lead foot saved my life. I was first off the line and I punched it when the light turned green. Just as I crossed the intersection I saw a car in my rear-view mirror whiz past through the red light at ~80MPH. If I had been slower, I would be dead.
You might be right but I wouldn't take it as certain. My uncle once told me it takes two people to cause an accident by which I mean it's at least possible the red light runner saw you - if you had been slower maybe they would have done 120MPH and gotten ahead of your or maybe 60MPH and still ended up behind you.
Who knows though - it's certainly true the road is filled with idiots. I almost got hit by a car a few weeks ago because I stopped in the middle of intersection two avoid a bunch of knuckleheads on dirt bikes running a red light.
I think this did actually happen but specifically starting in 2020 and I am only talking about traffic violations and not general crime. The article even mentions it and I have posted links to NHTSA statistics showing an increase in road traffic deaths per mile that started in 2020 and then continued to increase.
People blamed cars, pandemic stress, and decaying roads but I don't think it's any of those. I think the pullback in policing roads is a big part of it. Road rage incidents have increased in some regions too, I assume all regions, but these aren't necessarily counted nationwide.
I think it's possible that the empty roads in 2020 caused people to become accustomed to speeding and driving without other drivers on the road and caused people to degenerate as far as dealing with other people on the roads. I say this because speeding offenses increased since 2020 so maybe all these things are correlated. People became accustomed to not having to follow road traffic rules, and following sociable and safe driving, and get annoyed when they have to now. Police aren't enforcing it either. Just my thoughts.
This is a cop out; a simple sounding excuse to just throw up your hands, say "kids these days" and then go back to your armchair.
The fact is, you have a lot of problems that you're not dealing with, from stroads [1] to an increase in the worst kind of "automated" driving systems that leave people less able to remain alert for road hazards, to an unhealthy increase in inequality that leads to antisocial behavior in the pissed off underclass... you got problems. Look to some of your European and Asian neighbors if you want help with solutions.
I don't think any of these things are primary reasons. My guess is it's more about selfish ("fiercely independent") behaviour and what you can get away with, and a lack of appreciation for rules/regulations that can (on the whole) make for a more reasonable society.
The idea that there are fake plates and minimal enforcement seems ridiculous to me.
(I'm Australian but have driven tens of thousands of miles in the USA.)
An expressway near me has a speed limit of 100 km/h. Most times I drive it, the fastest driver I might see is < 105 km/h. Vast majority will be at 99-101 km/h.
In the US, a significant number of people blatantly go 10-30+ km/h over the highway limits. What causes this?
I think it is the other way around. From various accounts I've heard from people coming here, it's more that Australians drive slowly.
There are 2 factors IMO:
* Decades of 'speed kills' advertising without nuance, and automated systems to catch perpetrators. Just wait until a double demerit weekend here in NSW - there is no reason you need to drive 85 in a 100 zone to avoid a ticket, but plenty do it. They're actually scared of that limit and keep a healthy distance from it.
* Car speedometers lying to us - 10% plus 4 km/h is a significant legally allowed error rate, higher than many countries. To actually go 100, my new car reads 105. I tested this with Waze and cross-referenced against GPS dashcam videos. Most people won't. I end up passing a lot of people due to this.
The simplest answer I can give you is that it’s socially acceptable.
Growing up even my mother told me she tried to go 5-10 MPH over posted. Everyone does it. It’s endemic.
I try to drive the speed limit but it’s actually difficult sometimes because so many people are literally criminally speeding all the time (20+ MPH over posted).
Drivers are worse now than 10-15 years ago. Drivers are more aggressive (tailgating, rolling stops, speeding, ...), more sociopathic (tinted windows, louder pipes, larger vehicles, fake license plates,...), more negligent (bald tires, texting-and-driving, bumpers ripped off jagged metal sticking out, ...).
Another data point. Dashcams are on the rise, and they are truly the indicator technology of a low-trust society (remember the early car carnage internet videos, those were nearly always from russia or eastern europe, good times!). Wherever dashcams flourish, social contract is fraying.
It does not have to be like this. Many countries in Europe are making quite the opposite shift. Just recently was in London. Unreal! That place is so much more airy and welcoming than just 10-15 years ago. Covent Garden was positively quiet; so many electric cars and utility vehicles, much slower travel speeds, fewer streets, ... phenomenal. Once you experience it, and especially if you have a memory of the dark times, nobody in their right mind will want to turn back.
And wrt:
> People suck.
Do allow me a short digression and light hyperbole.
Maybe it's time to start pointing fingers, something americans, especially on the progressive-side, are too squeamish to do. In City of God, St Augustine blames the fall of Rome on the christians in the city ignoring the depravity of the pagans. Maybe we should take heed his advice, and it's time for the righteous to start calling out the wicked. Some people truly are crap, exhibit trash behaviors, and are making the world, quite simply, _worse_. We need to be confident in our judgements, and have the courage to clearly delineate right from wrong. As americans, live-and-let-live is ingrained in our DNA, but d*mn somethings gotta give here, drivers are really out of control.
>In City of God, St Augustine blames the fall of Rome on the christians in the city ignoring the depravity of the pagans.
Christians for centuries were the people that burned people at the stake for believing the wrong religion, or even the wrong version of Christianity. They're far from "righteous".
What did the pagans do wrong? They seemed to be pretty decent overall, by the standards of the time: they even had a holiday, Saturnalia (that the Christians co-opted), where the masters served the slaves and people shared gifts. Slaves could even save money and buy their freedom in Roman society. Under Christianity, slaves were brutally beaten and murdered on plantations and could never be free; Christians even happily fought a brutal war to keep slavery intact when the Europeans had long since banned the practice.
My comment was not about christians=good, pagans=bad. It's that St Augustine, somewhat counter-intuitively puts the blame of the collapse of the roman empire, not on the barbarian hordes, but on the upstanding romans being too timid to confront the moral decay amongst their neighbors.
Rome was at its peak during the pagan times; after they adopted Christianity things went downhill. Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but I don't see how Christians have any valid claim to moral righteousness. If any one thing could be pointed to for Rome's collapse, it's probably just corruption, which can happen to any society, and is not at all the same as "moral decay".
It's because no one is enforcing these rules. I've driven drunk and ran red lights and sped until I got nailed for each of these.
I still cut in line (or whatever the term is for cars) when I can because in 20 years of urban driving I saw a cop pull someone over for that ONCE. So why wait in line when every time 10 other cars cut the line.
On the other hand it feels like there's been a huge money grab with automated systems mailing out tickets or maybe I'm just at sore at the $180 red light camera ticket I just paid.
Red light cameras are proven to reduce the most dangerous intersection crashes (T-bones) at the expense of a slight increase in rear-end collisions (which are the fault of the second driver for following too closely, and likely both drivers for speeding.)
Before anyone starts bleating about companies changing cycle times: that's only happened in a few areas and most municipalities and states have caught on to the scam. It's an easy legislative fix to require light timings be based off federal standards, which they should be anyway.
I paid 700 bucks at a red light camera in the middle of an empty intersection at 2pm on a Saturday in Culver City, CA. It came out of nowhere. It felt like an obvious money grab
Yeah I normally run red lights. I’m trying to fight the system. It definitely wasn’t because I was taking the GRE the following monday and I wanted to scope the place out. I like the stress of my parents getting a ticket in my life.
Also a couple months after, then Culver City stopped the red light traffic camera program
I am absolutely not a fan of fixed or hidden speed cameras, but red light cameras are legitimately good because you have zero reason or excuse to go through a red or speed through an intersection.
Complaining about "going 90mph on a 65mph speed limit" is not a "speed trap"; a speed trap is a situation set up in such a way that many well-intentioned people make an honest mistake. Things like confusing signage, sudden and/or unusual change in the speed limit, and so forth.
This is just someone sour because they got caught speeding. For reference 90 mph is 145 km/h, it's pretty fast, and the limit in CA seems to be 70 mph at the most. Driving at 90mph is always wrong unless you are rushing someone to the hospital or similar emergencies.
One issue has been jurisdictions shortening the length of yellow lights in order to catch people running the red light as a means of revenue generation.
Avoiding an accident is always a valid reason for breaking a traffic law.
For example, on a two lane road I'll move into the left lane if there's a cyclist on the right shoulder, if the left lane is clear.
As for a red light, my pedal will be to the metal if my buddy is bleeding out in the passenger seat. Is that far-fetched? It happened to a friend of mine at Boeing. He didn't get his friend to the hospital in time.
More often, cars at a red light need to clear a path ASAP for emergency vehicles approaching from behind. The cars at the front of the line have nowhere to go except past the intersection, running the light.
As always, use your best judgement rather than blindly following rules. This is also why cops, prosecutors, judges, and juries have discretion about applying the law, because the law simply cannot be blindly applied.
(Which is why I object to mandatory sentencing laws.)
I suppose the camera would have a great shot to prove this heroism, and if you couldn't get dismissal for the ticket under these extraordinary circumstances, you'd be one gofundme away from turning a profit from the outrage/sympathy legions.
You can always fight a ticket if you have a legitimate reason behind it. Whether or not the approving party will see your reasons as legitimate is another story.
I am a volunteer EMT who has run thousands of calls.
If someone is "bleeding out" in that they have an uncontrolled hemorrhage driving faster is never the preferred option.
Generally speaking there are two types of hemorrhage:
1. Those that can be controlled through direct pressure and the body's clotting ability.
2. Those that cannot be controlled through direct pressure and the body's clotting ability.
If the hemorrhage is type 1 the best course of action is to calm down, slow down, and apply direct pressure while the patient is immobile until the bleeding stops. Driving fast will only stress the patient and may possibly lead to additional bleeding through jostling or poor application of direct pressure. Once the bleeding has stopped you can travel to the hospital at a reasonable and prudent speed.
If the hemorrhage is type 2 the only course of action is to apply a tourniquet. Once the tourniquet is applied you can proceed to the hospital at a safe pace. It is impossible to drive fast enough to save someone with an uncontrollable hemorrhage unless you are within 180-to-300 seconds of a hospital. A tourniquet can be anything, including a shoelace, belt, or torn-up shirt.
Even if the hemorrhage is a type that cannot be stopped by a tourniquet or pressure, like a chest wound, driving faster will likely not help because without applying an occlusive bandage to the wound(s) the patient will likely be dead in minutes. An occlusive bandage is any airtight barrier, like a piece of plastic, that can create a seal needed to allow for adequate respiration.
In all cases treating for shock is more important than speed. For non-EMS personnel the only preventative measures for shock are: stop bleeding, wrap patient to retain body heat, and place patient in a position of comfort.
When it comes to bleeding driving faster without basic interventions does little-to-nothing to improve the outcome for the patient, and a lot to increase the chances of creating more than one patient.
Driving faster than is reasonable is called "diesel therapy" and the only times I have used that is for breech presentations during childbirth, which are also the only times I've heard my paramedic sound scared and we've run some gnarly calls.
If you come across someone who has amputated their leg with a chainsaw and you are five minutes from the hospital at maximum speed and EMS is 30 minutes away, it is better to lie the patient down, keep them still, apply a tourniquet to the appendage, do whatever is necessary to warm them (including putting them in an idling car, preferably lying down, with the heater at maximum), and call 911 than it is to throw them in a car and drive fast.
Don't worry, the control of external bleeding is basic first aid, no EMT training necessary.
What I said is the exact same stuff they teach you in Lifeguard training, and if 15-year-old me can learn it, anyone can. Never took it, but babysitter training probably covers it as well.
Except some municipalities with large red light camera revenue streams use bad math to justify unsafely short yellow light times in order to increase ticket revenues.
The revenue from traffic tickets and other fines should not go to any level of government. It should go to NGOs. Then law enforcement would cease to be a for-profit operation.
I’ve avoided several collisions by making the snap decision to go ahead and run a stale yellow (knowing I technically was running a red). Some maybe warranted a moving violation if I’d been pulled over, and I’d (erm) cop to that if it were the case, but these cases have all been distraction by trying to avoid other driving dangers. Others were straight up design failures I couldn’t avoid if I’d tried, usually lights timed to make stopping impossible. In every case, I’d rather run a light than smash vehicles together to follow the rules.
It's complicated: the presence of a red-light camera decreases the rate of right-angle crashes, but increases the rate of rear-end crashes - people about to miss the light will stomp on their brakes instead of scooting on through. It's not clear there is any benefit, other than to the profits of the private companies typically contracted to operate the cameras.
Traffic enforcement should REQUIRE a police officer to be physically present at the time of the incident OR a retroactive issue related to an accident that happened.
The officer's presence would encourage safer driving at problematic intersections.
A police officer doesn't need to be present for code enforcement (ie. property inspections etc..).
A police officer doesn't need to be present for parking enforcement.
A police officer doesn't need to be present for toll fee collection enforcement.
Why should police then be present when violating traffic rules? What makes speeding or running a red light so meaningfully special that its enforcement cannot be automated, but violating parking rules can be?
> The officer's presence would encourage safer driving at problematic intersections.
Cameras would be the exact same type of encouragement, and not be nearly as disruptive or dangerous as a cop pulling someone over.
Cameras are treated as revenue streams, not safety improvement devices. That's the cover story that's sold to the public, and then it's not unheard of for the light timings to be adjusted to increase revenues rather than promote safety at the intersection.
If an office is stated at an intersection it is an important issue. Similar in spirit to warrants as an important step in violating people's privacy.
But they are. Speed and red light cameras reduce injury and death. I want myself and my family to live in a city where we won't get randomly murdered or maimed. The carrot isn't working on drivers, it's time for the stick.
> Similar to warrants
It's not at all. A warrant is invasion of somebody's home because executive power has reason to belief crime is going on. A speed camera invades no-ones privacy, and just registers violations of traffic rules.
It's obvious--automated enforcement is effective and consistent, and drivers are used to breaking the rules because human enforcement is neither of those things.
As I understand New York state requires car inspections every 12 months. Do they not fail that due to unreadable license plates? Where I am in Europe if you even have a screw in a place that could potentially confuse a camera it will fail the inspection.
This article talks about both unreadable and fake plates. I think you're talking about unreadable plates.
In that case you remove your tape or other obstruction before the inspection and put it back right after.
The police in New York support this kind of obstruction when done by the right people. The person quoted in the article removed an obstruction from a license plate of a car parked on the street. The driver called the cops, who took the side of the person evading traffic law.
If the goal is to avoid getting tickets from automated processes, I'd imagine they put back on the real one for inspection, then swap it back when they get home.
Enforcement on car inspections is lax. You might receive additional citations or an increased fine for having an expired inspection, but a lot of New York drivers (who I assume are not unique) will simply ignore tickets or pretend that they never received them (which is easy when they frequently come in the form of a letter tucked under your wiper, rather than a digital record).
There are plenty of cars in my neighborhood that are patently unsafe by the city and state's standards, or are modified in ways that wouldn't pass inspection. Many of them belong to cops, who drive into my neighborhood to police it from outside of the city.
Nope: most NYC civil servants are required to live in the city, but the police are allowed to live in the neighboring suburbs[1]. The majority live outside of the city[2], with most commuting in by car (and then parking on the sidewalks of the neighborhoods they ostensibly serve[3]).
I've never seen a separate plate for bike racks. Technically in many US states, a bike rack could get you pulled over for having a blocked plate but in practice police don't enforce that. The assumption is the front plant is enough but then not all states require a front plate.
The license plate and registration laws in the US are very fragmented. Some states out the registration on the license plate, some on the front or side window, and some are moving to digital only registration.
Essentially with almost no work, you can make proving you don't have a validate plate or registration difficult. You can just print a fake temp tag (paper license plate dealerships use) for a state like Texas but drive around in any other state since they have no way of knowing it's a fake temp/dealer plate.
Many of the subjects of Streetsblog's "criminal mischief" (defaced or obscured plates) are vehicles displaying NYPD parking permits. This problem won't get solved until someone besides the police is tasked with fixing it, at least in NYC.
This is the crux of it: NYC's finest make up a disproportionate fraction of license plate forgery and defacement cases. Enforcement cannot occur, because to enforce these laws would be to ticket and fine their own (or their owns' families).
old insight though: some of the best anti-police-advice comes from cops, to their families and kids. They know what the police actually have access to, and what they actually do with it, and they have no patience for that happening to THEM and their families.
but of course, they have that convenient citizen/criminal distinction cutout thought process to view the world through, which makes it okay to subject "unknown others" to it, who are "criminals" if they come into the purview of police and thus deserve this.
I've long suggested that the idea of a singular policing arm is, itself, inherently problematic.
Separation of powers is the key to a functioning government, and should be for the policing arm of the executive. Peace officers should obviously be tasked with the day-to-day of the policing.
However, enforcement of policing rules (within the executive branch) should come from a separate meta-police force based in the judicial branch, confirmed (and impeached/removed) by the legislative branch. This meta-police force would have full policing powers, but their jurisdiction would only extend to peace officers and members of the policing or district attorney's hierarchy.
Basically, you could rob a bank in front of these meta-police, and they could do nothing, but they could fully investigate a police officer accused of intentionally obscuring their plates, or unequally enforcing the law against folks with police benevolent society cards.
The idea that the executive branch, alone, can act, to me, is crazy. The Judicial branch is supposed to care about justice. They should have a limited arm to act much like the legislative branch has a limited arm to enforce subpoenas without the executive.
I was hoping to see some discussion of policy proposals and their pros and cons. Nope. Just another rambling news-style article. I think my experience with ChatGPT has changed what I expect in terms of information consumption. I’ve never liked the traditional journalism format; I’m more drawn to a well organized table of contents. If I want a freewheeling unstructured narrative, I can watch drunk history. Do others feel this way (about wanting better structured information, not inebriated content providers).
until about 20 years ago license plates were a reasonable compromise between privacy and accountability: they didn't have your name on them, and looking you up from the number could only be done by the police, who would only do it when it seemed important, and then only if someone made a note of the plate
they couldn't, for example, make a list of everyone who was parked near a protest, and then search a database to see where they were parked over the next two weeks
modern computer vision has changed all that, giving rise to massive dragnet surveillance; we should figure out how to get back the privacy we've lost
i don't think taping dead leaves to your license plate is going to solve the problem
prohibiting police from using computer vision isn't it either; they'll just buy the data from a private vendor like ring
You made me realize the painful difficulty in defining a distinction between legit use by police (which is occasionally used catching stolen cars, etc, and which makes the news) and creepy Orwellian surveillance.
Sorry, but do the police actually use these powers to arrest thieves and return stolen vehicles? Or is it like when you can point to the house that your stolen iPhone is in and the police say they can't do anything.
Exactly. No they do not use these powers to return stolen cars. Stolen cars only get returned very extremely rarely and only if it's convenient for the police. They don't lift an extra finger to recover stolen property.
I used to have a neighbor who didn't even know that his car was stolen until he got a call from the police at 6AM. It's not like they towed it back to his house, but at least he was aware of where it was.
A friend had their car stolen in St. Louis. Police did nothing, even though the location of the vehicle was known and the person who stole it was identified. When police did nothing, eventually the owner recovered the car themself when they found it abandoned. They got it repaired and reported it not-stolen. 3 months later they got pulled over and dragged out of the car at gunpoint, handcuffed, arrested, etc. For stealing their own car.
Edit:
My point is, police will absolutely arrest someone driving a stolen car. They love to arrest people, that's their main business. Recovering property isn't their main business and they actively avoid it. Generally police will not go to a specific location to recover a vehicle that's been stolen but now is sitting in someone's driveway, for example. I'm sure there are exceptions but I am fairly confident that stolen car recovery is rare and generally happens only if they catch someone actively driving around with the stolen car and the same license plates which have been recorded as belonging to a stolen vehicle.
It's just an anecdote, but living in the same place where the incident I mentioned earlier happened, I was really surprised when I called in a report that I had seen my bicycle, reported stolen weeks before, being ridden in a certain neighborhood and not only did they send over a police officer to take a statement, he actually tracked it down and brought it back with suspect in the back of his car.
Unfortunately, it turned out not to be my bike: just same make/model/color with a bike shop sticker in the same location as mine.
And this in a city that at the time had a county-wide reputation for high crime.
> Newer systems don't even need a license plate, they learn the overall appearance of the car.
I'm probably missing some context, but what do you mean by this? If you take two cars that are the same model/year/colour, how do you differentiate between them on the basis of appearance?
I would think the best way to counteract this is to use computer vision systems to detect cameras and shine lasers or bright point sources of light at them.
That seems like a mention in William Gibson’s next book- a dash mounted laser that tracks traffic cameras and targets a beam to block the recording as the car moves.
I believe we need to move to e ink (or similar tech) based licence plates. The numbers would change every few minutes but still would be cryptographically tied to an owner if you both have a time stamp and a proper decryption key. The idea would be that if you had the proper authorization (police, DMV, etc) and a time stamp you could see the owner of a vehicle, but it would hinder 3rd party private alpr dragnet systems. It wouldn’t change much for entities like police, but it could put in place a system of accountability (ie: decryption rules set at the state level instead of local level, etc)
Someone was just shot for accidentally getting into the wrong car.
It's not unusual around here to have a row of identical cars in, e.g., a Walmart parking lot. How do you propose people recognize their own vehicles if the license plate numbers are constantly changing?
So your suggestion is that people avoid purchasing cars that happen to be very popular in their general area and if they can't (or won't) avoid that, paint it differently or affix bumper stickers?
yeah, if you're such a timid conformist that you literally can't tell your car apart from someone else's, i don't see why anyone should care what happens to you
> prohibiting police from using computer vision isn't it either; they'll just buy the data from a private vendor like ring
The answer to this would be to legislate what data private vendors like ring can and can't collect.
In the end I feel legislation is really the only option; some fancy stuff with crypto like one of the other commenters mentions sounds both complex and error-prone to implement and have it work well, and also risks being cracked either by reverse-engineering or just leaked decryption keys. And if $entity wants to track your car – or anything else – they can probably do so anyway one way or the other. The only real option without having to play whack-a-mole is decent legislation.
New cars don't even need license plates to be tracked. They transmit telemetry over 5G. The car companies sell this data to whoever they want, including law enforcement.
Right now you can probably disable the cell radio by disconnecting the antenna but if that becomes popular I have no doubts that cars will be changed to refuse to operate without regular connections.
The recent infrastructure bill (H.R. 3684) includes a requirement for cars to have anti-drunk driving tech included, which includes driver-facing cameras.
All of this data will be sold to the highest bidder.
There have been plenty of times I did not have change for the tolls and was poor enough that the fine would come out of my grocery budget. I would pull over, cover my plate, run the toll, take the next exit, then uncover the plate.
I'm not using fake, but I've got temp tags on my new car that I've not bothered to fix yet. They've been expired for about a year now. Real plates are sitting at the dealership. Urgency level is one of "maybe when I go to get my oil changed".
Not sure how exactly I wound up feeling this way about administrative matters, but here we are. Tempting authorities with punitive options over pedantic crap is the extra spice I like in my coffee these days.
Maybe that clerk also grabs a couple and sells them on the corner to some getaway driver. Seems like having your plate floating out there is a bad idea. At best nothing happens. At worst, you get your door knocked in and a mid night beating from the local swat team. Lawyering up, proving it wasn’t you, etc.
I did this for a while too. I'd suggest actually keeping the plates in the vehicle with you. Some grumpy highway patrol can decide to tow the vehicle unless you fix it then and there. Some may do it anyway. Each state has different time limits for ticket vs tow/impound.
And in some of them driving with expired registration is a misdemeanor. Hardly seems worth risking having to pay a lawyer, court costs, plus the time & aggravation versus just getting the plates.
You can wreak far greater havoc on a larger scale with a computer and an internet connection, than with a car. It's time to do away with the draconian and authoritarian practice of requiring to register your vehicle with the state.
I've been trying to think of a way to foil ALPR (to evade private tracking, not tolls and the like). I never thought of taping leaves to my plates. I might give that a try.
That was my first thought. If I walked outside and saw some douchebag in a paperboy hat writing on my vehicle with a permanent marker I would start throwing rocks at them. The little game of fraud cat and mouse I play is between me and the government.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 64.1 ms ] threadI think it’s just moral decay. I can’t think of any other meaningful reason.
In Phoenix, which I consider the national capitol of bad drivers, in the span of less than 10 years, I’ve noticed a staggering number of people in the metro area who just blatantly run red lights now. Sometimes seconds after they’ve turned.
It’s straight up ridiculous, and now I spend time actually checking both sides of the road before driving away from stoplights in an active intersection.
I wouldn’t have thought to do that before. People just obeyed the law here. Not consistently mind you: no soul drives the 55 speed limit on I-17, but it’s getting measurably worse.
What else do you attribute to that? I guess you could say less traffic enforcement, but I don’t think anything’s changed here in this part of the country.
People suck.
See: the sizable contingent in SF who believes that open air drug markets and rampant violent crime are simply the price one must pay to live in cities.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Letting people into the country who come from third world countries where they are not use to laws being enforced and thus dont follow them once here.
Cities like San Francisco going down the tubes.
Not trying to be political just logical that being laisez faire on such things has negative consequences on a peaceful society ruled by laws and thus respect for your fellow citizen.
Im independent yet cant wait to vote out this type of laissez faire thinking.
To this day (despite this occurring in December 2021) there have been no arrests made. The police have names, video, witnesses and audio of one participant bragging about the assault.
The former DA had zero interest in prosecuting and the current one is suffocating under the backlog left to them.
This is not how a well functioning city - let alone a high trust one - operates. And it’s not just about statistics - an assault in SF, where it is likely the culprit won’t be arrested and certainly won’t be sent to prison, is significantly more damaging than a similar assault in a properly policed and actually adjudicating municipality.
Usually those crying out “moral decay” do so because they have certain pet theories, but there is no evidence for those pet theories, and more often than not there is enough evidence to disprove their pet theory.
I suspect the reason for greater fake license plate use is the same reason for most products picking up: people are selling them, people are hearing about them, etc.
I suspect speeding has many causes, among them the fact that cars these days can accelerate easier and ride more gently at high speeds. People mostly drive however feels comfortable.
I'm not sure moral decay is the term I'd use, perhaps?
I'd argue what's happening is that people seem to care less about other people, and more about themselves. It's more indifference, than outward anger or spite. "I'm not running the red light to hurt you, I just don't care that delays you, and I've got places to be" mindset.
At least, that's what I've concluded from my own observations.
Check your stats, this is quickly becoming outdated. Murder rates are back up where they were in the 90's in many parts of the USA.
1) https://wonder.cdc.gov/Deaths-by-Underlying-Cause.html 2) https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/
But, the fear got some innocent door ringers killed already, so if the fear goes up, we might get there.
It's more complicated than that. New York and Houston, for example, are way down from their peaks, and no one would consider those rural.
for major cities it is here: https://counciloncj.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CCJ%E2%80...
a personal anecdote on issues with crime data:
the old truck i've got got broken into and the ignition got punched out and someone tried to steal it, but even though it is a 2000 it has an immobilizer so they weren't successful. i didn't bother reporting it. it was way under my insurance deductible and the cops aren't going to do anything due to a few hundred bucks of property damage. that incident won't appear in any statistics.
declining levels of relatively minor crime may reflect growing awareness that reporting it to the police is just a waste of everyone's time.
Unfortunately, the result has been skyrocketing injuries and deaths.
But, yes I find myself not having a lot of respect for much of traffic control these days, when the cities can't be bothered to even make the lights flash at 3 AM, and instead are stopping me at every single light down a road for exactly zero cross traffic. Or when there is a light out, and a cop sitting in their car waiting for someone to not treat it like a 4 way stop instead of getting out and directing traffic.
So, while I don't live in a place with automated ticketing, I can see the allure of fake license plates. My brother in law's house just had a light added on the cross street he uses to leave the neighborhood. Whats the first thing its doing? Long light cycles with short interruptions and ticketing everyone who runs it. Again because while that intersection hasn't needed a light for the past 40 years, and the town he is in hasn't grown much it got one after some drunk teenager caused a big accident. So, now it backs up, and instead of just turning left after a 10 seconds or so with a gap, one can sit there for multiple minutes because there are a dozen cars backed up trying to get out. And of course the ticket is like $150 or something, most of which goes to the private corp that put the camera in.
On the east and west coast, I feel like car sensing traffic lights are the norm.
But this is about the situation in which the main road should be flashing yellow at low-traffic times, and the cross streets flashing red. Or, all flashing red if it's a limited-visibilty intersection. There's one of the latter near me, and it really only needs full cycles during morning and evening rush. The rest of the time, it would be faster for all involved as a four-way stop.
I live in a rural area where, as you can expect, traffic is very light. It was an absolute godsend when all the turn arrows changed from red/green to red/green/yield on flashing yellow. The frustration of sitting at a red turn signal when you could see that there was no oncoming traffic for a mile down the road was palpable, but cops are very good at hiding.
Over forty years ago my lead foot saved my life. I was first off the line and I punched it when the light turned green. Just as I crossed the intersection I saw a car in my rear-view mirror whiz past through the red light at ~80MPH. If I had been slower, I would be dead.
Who knows though - it's certainly true the road is filled with idiots. I almost got hit by a car a few weeks ago because I stopped in the middle of intersection two avoid a bunch of knuckleheads on dirt bikes running a red light.
People blamed cars, pandemic stress, and decaying roads but I don't think it's any of those. I think the pullback in policing roads is a big part of it. Road rage incidents have increased in some regions too, I assume all regions, but these aren't necessarily counted nationwide.
I think it's possible that the empty roads in 2020 caused people to become accustomed to speeding and driving without other drivers on the road and caused people to degenerate as far as dealing with other people on the roads. I say this because speeding offenses increased since 2020 so maybe all these things are correlated. People became accustomed to not having to follow road traffic rules, and following sociable and safe driving, and get annoyed when they have to now. Police aren't enforcing it either. Just my thoughts.
This is a cop out; a simple sounding excuse to just throw up your hands, say "kids these days" and then go back to your armchair.
The fact is, you have a lot of problems that you're not dealing with, from stroads [1] to an increase in the worst kind of "automated" driving systems that leave people less able to remain alert for road hazards, to an unhealthy increase in inequality that leads to antisocial behavior in the pissed off underclass... you got problems. Look to some of your European and Asian neighbors if you want help with solutions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
The idea that there are fake plates and minimal enforcement seems ridiculous to me.
(I'm Australian but have driven tens of thousands of miles in the USA.)
In the US, a significant number of people blatantly go 10-30+ km/h over the highway limits. What causes this?
There are 2 factors IMO:
* Decades of 'speed kills' advertising without nuance, and automated systems to catch perpetrators. Just wait until a double demerit weekend here in NSW - there is no reason you need to drive 85 in a 100 zone to avoid a ticket, but plenty do it. They're actually scared of that limit and keep a healthy distance from it.
* Car speedometers lying to us - 10% plus 4 km/h is a significant legally allowed error rate, higher than many countries. To actually go 100, my new car reads 105. I tested this with Waze and cross-referenced against GPS dashcam videos. Most people won't. I end up passing a lot of people due to this.
Growing up even my mother told me she tried to go 5-10 MPH over posted. Everyone does it. It’s endemic.
I try to drive the speed limit but it’s actually difficult sometimes because so many people are literally criminally speeding all the time (20+ MPH over posted).
Drivers are worse now than 10-15 years ago. Drivers are more aggressive (tailgating, rolling stops, speeding, ...), more sociopathic (tinted windows, louder pipes, larger vehicles, fake license plates,...), more negligent (bald tires, texting-and-driving, bumpers ripped off jagged metal sticking out, ...).
Another data point. Dashcams are on the rise, and they are truly the indicator technology of a low-trust society (remember the early car carnage internet videos, those were nearly always from russia or eastern europe, good times!). Wherever dashcams flourish, social contract is fraying.
It does not have to be like this. Many countries in Europe are making quite the opposite shift. Just recently was in London. Unreal! That place is so much more airy and welcoming than just 10-15 years ago. Covent Garden was positively quiet; so many electric cars and utility vehicles, much slower travel speeds, fewer streets, ... phenomenal. Once you experience it, and especially if you have a memory of the dark times, nobody in their right mind will want to turn back.
And wrt:
> People suck.
Do allow me a short digression and light hyperbole.
Maybe it's time to start pointing fingers, something americans, especially on the progressive-side, are too squeamish to do. In City of God, St Augustine blames the fall of Rome on the christians in the city ignoring the depravity of the pagans. Maybe we should take heed his advice, and it's time for the righteous to start calling out the wicked. Some people truly are crap, exhibit trash behaviors, and are making the world, quite simply, _worse_. We need to be confident in our judgements, and have the courage to clearly delineate right from wrong. As americans, live-and-let-live is ingrained in our DNA, but d*mn somethings gotta give here, drivers are really out of control.
Christians for centuries were the people that burned people at the stake for believing the wrong religion, or even the wrong version of Christianity. They're far from "righteous".
What did the pagans do wrong? They seemed to be pretty decent overall, by the standards of the time: they even had a holiday, Saturnalia (that the Christians co-opted), where the masters served the slaves and people shared gifts. Slaves could even save money and buy their freedom in Roman society. Under Christianity, slaves were brutally beaten and murdered on plantations and could never be free; Christians even happily fought a brutal war to keep slavery intact when the Europeans had long since banned the practice.
I would have agreed, but then I experienced El Paso.
> no soul drives the 55 speed limit on I-17, but it’s getting measurably worse.
True. Feels like combat.
--
FWIW, I put some Jesus themed bling on my car. It seemed to help in Texas. Phoenix, not so much.
Before anyone starts bleating about companies changing cycle times: that's only happened in a few areas and most municipalities and states have caught on to the scam. It's an easy legislative fix to require light timings be based off federal standards, which they should be anyway.
Also a couple months after, then Culver City stopped the red light traffic camera program
One example: https://www.speedtrap.org/california/lone-pine/
This is just someone sour because they got caught speeding. For reference 90 mph is 145 km/h, it's pretty fast, and the limit in CA seems to be 70 mph at the most. Driving at 90mph is always wrong unless you are rushing someone to the hospital or similar emergencies.
For example, on a two lane road I'll move into the left lane if there's a cyclist on the right shoulder, if the left lane is clear.
As for a red light, my pedal will be to the metal if my buddy is bleeding out in the passenger seat. Is that far-fetched? It happened to a friend of mine at Boeing. He didn't get his friend to the hospital in time.
As always, use your best judgement rather than blindly following rules. This is also why cops, prosecutors, judges, and juries have discretion about applying the law, because the law simply cannot be blindly applied.
(Which is why I object to mandatory sentencing laws.)
sorry about your friend's friend.
I'm merely pointing out these absolutist statements are wrong.
If someone is "bleeding out" in that they have an uncontrolled hemorrhage driving faster is never the preferred option.
Generally speaking there are two types of hemorrhage:
1. Those that can be controlled through direct pressure and the body's clotting ability.
2. Those that cannot be controlled through direct pressure and the body's clotting ability.
If the hemorrhage is type 1 the best course of action is to calm down, slow down, and apply direct pressure while the patient is immobile until the bleeding stops. Driving fast will only stress the patient and may possibly lead to additional bleeding through jostling or poor application of direct pressure. Once the bleeding has stopped you can travel to the hospital at a reasonable and prudent speed.
If the hemorrhage is type 2 the only course of action is to apply a tourniquet. Once the tourniquet is applied you can proceed to the hospital at a safe pace. It is impossible to drive fast enough to save someone with an uncontrollable hemorrhage unless you are within 180-to-300 seconds of a hospital. A tourniquet can be anything, including a shoelace, belt, or torn-up shirt.
Even if the hemorrhage is a type that cannot be stopped by a tourniquet or pressure, like a chest wound, driving faster will likely not help because without applying an occlusive bandage to the wound(s) the patient will likely be dead in minutes. An occlusive bandage is any airtight barrier, like a piece of plastic, that can create a seal needed to allow for adequate respiration.
In all cases treating for shock is more important than speed. For non-EMS personnel the only preventative measures for shock are: stop bleeding, wrap patient to retain body heat, and place patient in a position of comfort.
When it comes to bleeding driving faster without basic interventions does little-to-nothing to improve the outcome for the patient, and a lot to increase the chances of creating more than one patient.
Driving faster than is reasonable is called "diesel therapy" and the only times I have used that is for breech presentations during childbirth, which are also the only times I've heard my paramedic sound scared and we've run some gnarly calls.
If you come across someone who has amputated their leg with a chainsaw and you are five minutes from the hospital at maximum speed and EMS is 30 minutes away, it is better to lie the patient down, keep them still, apply a tourniquet to the appendage, do whatever is necessary to warm them (including putting them in an idling car, preferably lying down, with the heater at maximum), and call 911 than it is to throw them in a car and drive fast.
Although I would drive fast, I would not drive recklessly, as I am well aware that causing an accident would do nobody any good.
What I said is the exact same stuff they teach you in Lifeguard training, and if 15-year-old me can learn it, anyone can. Never took it, but babysitter training probably covers it as well.
https://www.redcross.org/take-a-class/first-aid/first-aid-tr...
More details here: https://redlightrobber.com
https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/...
The officer's presence would encourage safer driving at problematic intersections.
A police officer doesn't need to be present for code enforcement (ie. property inspections etc..).
A police officer doesn't need to be present for parking enforcement.
A police officer doesn't need to be present for toll fee collection enforcement.
Why should police then be present when violating traffic rules? What makes speeding or running a red light so meaningfully special that its enforcement cannot be automated, but violating parking rules can be?
> The officer's presence would encourage safer driving at problematic intersections.
Cameras would be the exact same type of encouragement, and not be nearly as disruptive or dangerous as a cop pulling someone over.
What gives?
If an office is stated at an intersection it is an important issue. Similar in spirit to warrants as an important step in violating people's privacy.
But that's just like your opinion man.
> not safety improvement devices.
But they are. Speed and red light cameras reduce injury and death. I want myself and my family to live in a city where we won't get randomly murdered or maimed. The carrot isn't working on drivers, it's time for the stick.
> Similar to warrants
It's not at all. A warrant is invasion of somebody's home because executive power has reason to belief crime is going on. A speed camera invades no-ones privacy, and just registers violations of traffic rules.
The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution requires that to be the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause
And wrt court challenge, I mean, the photographic evidence is right there, car running red light, can't be more clear. Why would it be dismissed?
And Why does every crime need witness? Plenty of prosecutions on photographic or forensic 3videnc3 alone.
Also, is traffic violation a crime (is it, genuinely asking (?))
Tbh, this often feel like people rummaging around the couch cushions for reasons (not saying you, link much appreciated, til)
In that case you remove your tape or other obstruction before the inspection and put it back right after.
The police in New York support this kind of obstruction when done by the right people. The person quoted in the article removed an obstruction from a license plate of a car parked on the street. The driver called the cops, who took the side of the person evading traffic law.
you could just make it readable prior to inspection then make it unreadable again.
There are plenty of cars in my neighborhood that are patently unsafe by the city and state's standards, or are modified in ways that wouldn't pass inspection. Many of them belong to cops, who drive into my neighborhood to police it from outside of the city.
[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-hir...
[2]: https://gothamist.com/news/majority-nypd-officers-dont-live-...
[3]: https://twitter.com/NYPD_Parking
They implemented a shit mail system that doesn't work.
Then they suddenly had 350 million in unpaid tolls.
Talk about putting a stick in your wheel
So the legislature changed the law - don't pay to play on the quasi private road, and your registration will get suspended
I see a lot more cars with bike racks on 476 now.
The license plate and registration laws in the US are very fragmented. Some states out the registration on the license plate, some on the front or side window, and some are moving to digital only registration.
Essentially with almost no work, you can make proving you don't have a validate plate or registration difficult. You can just print a fake temp tag (paper license plate dealerships use) for a state like Texas but drive around in any other state since they have no way of knowing it's a fake temp/dealer plate.
Separation of powers is the key to a functioning government, and should be for the policing arm of the executive. Peace officers should obviously be tasked with the day-to-day of the policing.
However, enforcement of policing rules (within the executive branch) should come from a separate meta-police force based in the judicial branch, confirmed (and impeached/removed) by the legislative branch. This meta-police force would have full policing powers, but their jurisdiction would only extend to peace officers and members of the policing or district attorney's hierarchy.
Basically, you could rob a bank in front of these meta-police, and they could do nothing, but they could fully investigate a police officer accused of intentionally obscuring their plates, or unequally enforcing the law against folks with police benevolent society cards.
The idea that the executive branch, alone, can act, to me, is crazy. The Judicial branch is supposed to care about justice. They should have a limited arm to act much like the legislative branch has a limited arm to enforce subpoenas without the executive.
This is a good example of the measured, thoughtful tone this article is presenting.
they couldn't, for example, make a list of everyone who was parked near a protest, and then search a database to see where they were parked over the next two weeks
modern computer vision has changed all that, giving rise to massive dragnet surveillance; we should figure out how to get back the privacy we've lost
i don't think taping dead leaves to your license plate is going to solve the problem
prohibiting police from using computer vision isn't it either; they'll just buy the data from a private vendor like ring
Edit: My point is, police will absolutely arrest someone driving a stolen car. They love to arrest people, that's their main business. Recovering property isn't their main business and they actively avoid it. Generally police will not go to a specific location to recover a vehicle that's been stolen but now is sitting in someone's driveway, for example. I'm sure there are exceptions but I am fairly confident that stolen car recovery is rare and generally happens only if they catch someone actively driving around with the stolen car and the same license plates which have been recorded as belonging to a stolen vehicle.
Unfortunately, it turned out not to be my bike: just same make/model/color with a bike shop sticker in the same location as mine.
And this in a city that at the time had a county-wide reputation for high crime.
I'm probably missing some context, but what do you mean by this? If you take two cars that are the same model/year/colour, how do you differentiate between them on the basis of appearance?
It's not unusual around here to have a row of identical cars in, e.g., a Walmart parking lot. How do you propose people recognize their own vehicles if the license plate numbers are constantly changing?
this seems like an absurdly self-inflicted problem
if you're banging your head on the wall and it hurts, you could stop?
So your suggestion is that people avoid purchasing cars that happen to be very popular in their general area and if they can't (or won't) avoid that, paint it differently or affix bumper stickers?
The answer to this would be to legislate what data private vendors like ring can and can't collect.
In the end I feel legislation is really the only option; some fancy stuff with crypto like one of the other commenters mentions sounds both complex and error-prone to implement and have it work well, and also risks being cracked either by reverse-engineering or just leaked decryption keys. And if $entity wants to track your car – or anything else – they can probably do so anyway one way or the other. The only real option without having to play whack-a-mole is decent legislation.
Right now you can probably disable the cell radio by disconnecting the antenna but if that becomes popular I have no doubts that cars will be changed to refuse to operate without regular connections.
The recent infrastructure bill (H.R. 3684) includes a requirement for cars to have anti-drunk driving tech included, which includes driver-facing cameras.
All of this data will be sold to the highest bidder.
Never got caught. YMMV.
Not sure how exactly I wound up feeling this way about administrative matters, but here we are. Tempting authorities with punitive options over pedantic crap is the extra spice I like in my coffee these days.
I can imagine some dealership clerk coming into work and shrugging shoulders as they see the growing pile of plates .